The NAACP, which is demanding a recount in the Oakland mayoral race, wants the county to pay for it.
On Friday, which was the deadline to request and pay for a recount, the Oakland NAACP went to the Alameda County Registrar of Voters office to say it believes confusion over ranked choice voting led thousands of voters to select more than one candidate in the same ranking or submit ballots with no rankings at all.
"I gotta make all these choices," Oakland NAACP member Richard Breaux said. "Now I'm confused as hell and I'm trying to explain this to my neighbors."
Ranked choice voting has been debated in Oakland for years. Mayoral candidate Seneca Scott believes voters were once again misinformed when they went to the polls and that should be enough to reexamine the votes.
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"It should trigger an automatic recount after the amount of miseducation done by elected officials and the city clerk's office in an election that was decided by just over one-half a percent," Scott said.
Sheng Thao won by less than 700 votes over Loren Taylor.
Taylor has not asked for a recount, and Thao explained in a statement that if anyone wanted to fund a recount, she would welcome it.
A recount could cost $21,000 a day, and that cost would have to be paid by the group requesting it.
"We just think that to satisfy these seniors and probably others, the recount needs to happen," Oakland NAACP Political Action Chair Allie Whitehurst said.
With no payment, Tim Dupuis from the county said the recount is forfeited, saying the election does not warrant an automatic recount and that the state election code prevents the county from paying for it.
"We'll take those concerns and we'll talk with the city of Oakland as well, who is the election official for this race, and we will evaluate what we can do to address some of these concerns," Dupuis said.
